_Non nostrum est tantas componere lites!_ But Florence is certainly no
longer _Firenze la Gentile_ as she so eminently was in the days when I
knew her so well.
Whether any of the other cities of Italy have in any degree ceased to
merit the traditional epithets which so many successive generations
assigned to them--how far Genoa is still _la Superba_, Bologna _la
Grassa_, Padua _la Dotta_, Lucca _la Industriosa_--I cannot say.
Venezia is unquestionably still _la Bella_. And as for old Rome, she
vindicates more than ever her title to the epithet _Eterna_, by her
similitude to those nursery toys which, throw them about as you will,
still with infallible certitude come down heads uppermost.
As for the Florence of my old recollections, there were in the early
days of them many little old-world sights and sounds which are to be
seen and heard no longer, and which differentiated the place from
other social centres.
I remember a striking incident of this sort which happened to my
mother and myself "in the days before the flood," therefore very
shortly after our arrival there.
It was the practice in those days to carry the bodies of the dead on
open biers, with uncovered faces, to their burial. It had doubtless
been customary in old times so to carry all the dead; but the custom
was retained at the time of which I am writing only in the case
of distinguished persons, and very generally of the priesthood.
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